I think many people underestimate the bubbles because they’re not meant to be offensive, but they have a lot of utility. They provide the smokescreen effect, but also weaken many enemy types, block various attacks, and combine well to power up and augment her friends’ attacks. She managed to get the crystal back from Evil Tuxedo Kamen, and while she didn’t defeat a DD girl like her friends, she was able to destroy the illusion powers, allowing the others a better chance (she also demonstrated how her bubbles could be used defensively as a shield in that one). In the manga she’s nailing droids and other foot soldiers just like her friends and even takeout a few in the original movies. In the live action, she even takes out a few proper monsters. Girl is a boss.

Bubbles are quite painful if you have experience enough with them. The dreaded blowback on a windy day, popping immediately in your face.
Burns the eyes like nothing else

My theory is that people have a hard time understanding what the Sailor Powers actually are. So when they see the lineup, they assume Neptune has water powers. Then they get confused because no other sailors have similar power overlaps like Mercury and Neptune, and they assume they got it wrong and that Mercury has bubbles or something as her main power.
If only some handsome stranger could give a 101 lecture on what powers the sailors have and what kind of domain they fall under.

Mercury is Blue because shes the blueprint. Shes usually the first of the inners to get an upgrade.

In the original run of the manga, the attack didn’t even have a name. She just kinda put her hand up and mist appeared. “Mercury Aqua Mist” became the official name with the live action series aired along with an updated reprint of the manga! 😮

Doctors give an oath to "do no harm"... makes sense for Ami.

Mercury's underappreciated just like any support-type character in any piece of media. No flashy and powerful attacks but remove her from the team and they suddenly lose every battle lol.

Both her bubble mist and enemy analysis ability carried a lot of fights in the 90s anime. She's quite literally the 2nd most impactful among the original five sailors, right after Sailor Moon.

I have never seen even a little bit of Sailor Moon, but ironically, I wrote a story once where two humans visit a world full of dragons, and each dragon has an element at their command, and the dragon who teams up with the humans commands the element of bubbles, which he's incredibly self-conscious about, but no other element would have been able to help the heroes on their journey half as much. So this is an almost hilarious video to stumble across. XD

I'm not really much of a fan of Sailor Moon, but from the time I have watched the series in the past, I've always been drawn to Ami more than the rest of the cast. She's cute, smart, has the element of water, and I can totally see why people love her as much as they do.

............As for the joke about her being weak because she uses bubble attacks, I personally feel like that's more picking the low-hanging fruit than anything. People tend to not expect bubbles to be an effective weapon in direct combat, so they tend to be perceived as not being useful because of this, with it simply being easier to focus on how she can use it to hurt her enemies rather than any other utility it might give her. That being said, I can definitely by that she's a lot more powerful than people expect, since I remember finding a video once that talked about how the Sailor Senshi are actually ridiculously overpowered at their peak; so even if Ami is one of the weaker members of the team, she's still likely well above what many other fictional characters are capable of at her strongest

Because Blastoise's BubbleBeam is so harmless, amirite?

I smile whenever people say Sailor Mercury looks like Akane Tendo and vice versa.

The way I see it, Mercury gets hella buffed anyways before too long with Shine Aqua Illusion followed by Aqua Rhapsody...then Venus gets to have the lamest attacks in the next two sets, Mars kind of just maintains the status quo throughout as mid among the inner scouts, and Jupiter gets to retain having the most powerful-looking attack out of the four with Sparkling Wide Pressure, but ends up being mid but expanding her elemental repertoire with Oak Evolution.  I've only seen the 90s anime though.

Most annoying joke? Nah, the most annoying joke is Chibiusa tryna rizz up her future dad. I know it’s just comedy but it’s still weird how long it lasted and it got unfunny really quickly for me.

Even though I enjoyed the Bubble Spray attack and found Ami / Sailor Mercury's design super cute, I never heard of this comment until now.

Kinda strange since it's been a decade or so since I've first got into Sailor Moon and knew about all the other jokes / memes the franchise creates.

I really thought that Ami`s bubbles was weak. It never had done anything. Until i saw years later by a rewatch, that it had actually cold or acid property (i think cold) and was able to damage the enemy.
But, in all other episodes where she used it, had it only created a mist and nothing more. As if, the creator themself had forgotten, what ability the attack could do.

If ami was a water bender ya'll would stfu so fast.

Tell an army of your choice that they can have a weapon that blinds the enemy without affecting your own side, and watch them drool.

There’s a good reason why I rarely do the bubbles are useless jokes in my sailor moon abridged series because it’s extremely stale and unfunny. Yeah sometimes a character calls the bubbles useless but during the fight scenes I have them be basically chemical weapons, in fact sometimes I have mercury say “mustard gas bubbles”. Because honestly it’s a funnier joke then always being like “the bubbles are useless lol”

I think a lot of it comes down to the anime’s format. Monster has a plan that affects the daily life of one of the main cast. That character struggles recovers the monster works through their issue. Sailor moon shows up also struggles and either the Focus Scout or Tuxedo mask creates an opening and Sailor Moon uses the season’s kill attack. Bubble theming is the softest when compared to fire, lightning, and S&M so it is more likely to be disregarded as not doing anything.

Bubble attacks were really popular in 80s and 90s anime. Look at pokemon, there are 2 bubble moves for water pikemon. Bubble and bubble beam.